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Osaka Mulls Loli Ban “Free Speech More Harm Than Good?”

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Osaka’s governor has told press the city “will consider” whether a Tokyo-style ban on “harmful” materials is required in order to protect the precious children.

Governor Tōru Hashimoto, a lawyer and TV personality connected to the LDP, and at age 40 Japan’s youngest governor, had this to say:

“We have to be prudent with regards to freedom of speech. What’s important is to establish the reality of the situation.

If it does more harm than good, freedom of speech is not an absolute.”

This sudden anti-manga outburst is apparently intended to emulate the proposed Tokyo loli ban; bans in both Tokyo and Osaka are apparently intended to usher in a new golden age in which children are finally free from the abuse of their manga-addled parents and teachers.

With Japan’s rightist politicians seemingly having decided the cure for the nation’s ills is a return to pre-war fascism, and with the left apparently desperate to cozy up to China, the future of freedom of expression in Japan does not appear to be in the safest possible hands.

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